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Early California: pre-1769–1840s: Mexican California

The Mexican War for Independence in 1821 lead to an end of Spanish authority in California. The primary means of Spanish control, the missions, were dismantled in a process known as secularization. By 1840, this process was complete, with the vast tracks of mission land being divided up among Mexican landowners. A handful of powerful families were given control of most of the land. Relying on the hide and tallow trade, the Californios were content to import the manufactured goods they needed from abroad. Given California's distance from the rest of Mexico, a new identity developed among the inhabitants, giving rise to the name Californios rather than Espanoles or Mexicanos.

American settlers, who began to arrive by the 1830s, had a variety of opinions about life in Mexican California. These opinions were divided among two groups: the maritime traders and the overland settlers. The maritime traders populated the coastal towns of Los Angeles, Monterey, and San Diego and catered to the trading needs of the locals. Due to their economic interaction, they often had an understanding of Spanish, married Californio wives, and were generally accepted by the locals. Larkin's phrase, "Halcyon Days" exemplified their view of Mexican California as an idealized pastoral existence. The Overland settlers were the American fur trappers and farmers who settled in the Sacramento Valley. They often held the Californios in contempt, seeing their lifestyle as an affront to the Puritan work ethic. This viewpoint was articulated by men such as Thomas Jefferson Farnham, who in his 1844 book, Travels in the Californias, described the Californios as having,

…the dull suspicious countenance, the small twinkling piercing eye, the laxness and filth of a free brute, using freedom as a mere means of animal enjoyment, dancing and vomiting as occasion and inclination appears to require.

…a stout sturdy backwoodsman, of a stamp which only exists on the frontiers of the American States--men with the blood of the ancient Normans and Saxons in their veins--with hearts as large as their bodies can hold, breathing nothing but kindness till injustice shows its fangs, and then, lion-like, striking for vengeance.

Comparisons such as these were widely read by Americans back east. Writers like Farnham helped to convince them that California needed to be inhabited by a people worthy of its plentiful natural resources and capable of exploiting them, namely the American frontiersman.

By the start of the 1840s, Americans in California could see conflict between Mexico and the United States on the horizon. It was clear that California was the prize. The question was what role the Americans in California should play in the coming struggle. While the maritime traders sought a negotiated settlement in which the Californios could be peacefully brought into the expanded United States, the pioneers advocated an aggressive takeover similar to the Texas revolt. The arrival of John C. Fremont would help decide which course of action would be followed.

Standards:

4.2

Students describe the social, political, cultural and economic life and interactions among people of California from the pre-Columbian societies to the Spanish mission and Mexican rancho periods. (4.2.8)